


All Go Unto One Place

by perryvic, Zaganthi (Caffiends)



Series: Ashes to Ashes [14]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Stargate Atlantis Fusion, Anxiety, Cameos, M/M, Mental Health Issues, ZERO System (Gundam Wing)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:09:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25520368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perryvic/pseuds/perryvic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caffiends/pseuds/Zaganthi
Summary: He chose the study because it was formal and the least used room in the house, and brought in coffee and water because he needed something to do with his hands. "I'm sorry to request the house call. I haven't been in a reliable enough state to leave the house.""I quite understand," Bedelia murmured. "Is this the place you feel most comfortable talking?"He took the coffee and sat in one of the low overstuffed reading chairs rather than at the desk. "Yes. I, what we discussed a couple of weeks ago, you know. Surprising only to me, apparently, it went terribly." He cradled the coffee, watching her select where to sit, posture and movement impeccable as ever.
Relationships: Chang Wufei/Treize Khushrenada
Series: Ashes to Ashes [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1711870
Kudos: 1





	All Go Unto One Place

He'd eventually called Dr. du Maurier's office and asked if she could make a house call. Luckily enough, she would. It was a little strange, her being in his home. There was a part of his mind that compartmentalized their therapy sessions to a separate time and place, though her presence was as immediately calming as it had become over the time they had been seeing each other.

He chose the study because it was formal and the least used room in the house, and brought in coffee and water because he needed something to do with his hands. "I'm sorry to request the house call. I haven't been in a reliable enough state to leave the house."

"I quite understand," Bedelia murmured. "Is this the place you feel most comfortable talking?"

He took the coffee and sat in one of the low overstuffed reading chairs rather than at the desk. "Yes. I, what we discussed a couple of weeks ago, you know. Surprising only to me, apparently, it went terribly." He cradled the coffee, watching her select where to sit, posture and movement impeccable as ever.

"I surmised as such." There was no hint of blame or censure in Bedelia's tone. "Are you able to tell me what happened and what effects it has had?"

He thought about that, looking down into his cup. "I ended up back in the same monitored hospital room I spent two and a half years in. I... immediately had what I can only call a breakdown. He came into the room, and I asked him why, what I'd done to him. There hadn't been anything. I'd crossed him in battle decades ago, but... he just enjoyed torturing me."

"He being Kirill?" Bedelia clarified in a soft tone. She was going very gently with him, and he could tell that even in the state he was in.

"Kirill," he agreed. "I expected some... some justification. He didn't even try. Just..." Treize waved a hand slightly as if he could dismiss what had happened. "Said he'd missed hearing me scream. And I don't... remember a great deal of what happened. I have a few horrible snapshot memories, but it's... blissfully blank. I apparently wasn't as comatose as I thought."

"We have discussed in the past there was a possibility that that memory gap was repression rather than unconsciousness," Bedelia noted. "What is it you are feeling now?"

"Unsettled. I'm struggling with things I did twenty, thirty years ago, not that. I'm having anxiety attacks." Which was new for him, though probably not new for a professional.

"Rather understandable," Bedelia said soothingly. "Your body is sending out its distress messages and part of stopping that is giving it acknowledgement it is being heard. How are the anxiety attacks manifesting themselves?"

"Panic. It comes over me like a wave and I freeze. Which is fine, I can freeze in my workshop." He didn't care, but it was starting to impact him.

"Are you conscious of any triggers that lead into this wave?" Bedelia queried.

"No. It's some random sensory input that hits the wrong way and sparks off of something else and I can't anticipate when it's going to occur. And I started having night terrors about the wars. The earliest years that I was involved in." He took a sip of coffee and regarding her thoughtfully over the rim of the cup. "I've never had nightmares that I remember."

"This is an unscientific way of expressing the fact, but there is some truth in it," Bedelia began. "Often, it is when you subconsciously feel safe after high levels of trauma that you get symptoms like this. It is the release valve on a pressure cooker of emotions. Unfortunately, this feels very uncomfortable and distressing for people used to control, so the urge is to try and compress them down again."

"I need a way to handle all of this better than I have been. I started having dissociative episodes again. They did go away for a while, as you know." Because his stress and everything that exacerbated them had gotten better.

"That's to be expected with an additional trauma -- a minor relapse that will resolve as we work through these issues." Her confidence was unassailable. "Now, Treize, I know you like to see the reasons we are doing something before we do it. We are going to have to pick our way through the traumas and watch for the points that cause a triggering reaction. If you go into an anxiety fugue state or a panic attack, I will talk you through the process of short circuiting it."

"All right. I've done both without any guidance at all recently, so it can't be worse." He did lean heavily on Wufei when it happened, but there were some things, there was a lot he didn't want to throw at Wufei. One's partner couldn't, shouldn't, have to handle everything, that was just absurd.

"Let us first check how you are feeling at this moment and get you to a state of calm," Bedelia asked. "How is your level of anxiety now?"

It was easy to have a glib answer, but he thought about it for a moment. "Not terrible. About normal."

"Then make yourself comfortable and we can do the deep breathing that we used trying to establish the predisposition to calm," she said in that hypnotic way. "Now breathe in for the count of three, and hold, and exhale for the count of four... that's it. Nice and slow." She talked at him slowly but surely, just working on getting even more relaxed.

He set the coffee cup aside because it left him feeling drowsy, almost too at ease. Nice and slow, relaxed, it would be easier to face whatever was coming next. "All right."

They repeated the breathing exercises for a few minutes until he was much more relaxed and then he heard her say, "Tell me about what happened when the situation first seemed to go out of control. You will see the memory as if it is a movie in front of you, rather than re-experiencing it. You will see it with clarity."

She liked to give him a vague request, because there was something important to how he responded to the indeterminacy. "I had tried to get out of the door; it was solidly locked, so I ended up leaning against it, waiting. The door started to open, I got up to rush it, and pushed at it. He slammed the door on my knee and my hand. I'm not sure why I thought I could overpower him."

"Examine that action," Bedelia encouraged. "Reframe that last thought. Why would you not think that you could overpower him?"

It caught him off guard, but he nodded. "I had no reason to think I couldn't have overpowered him. I know how to fight very well. But I shut down. The pain was too much and I couldn't stand."

"So it was a physical limitation," Bedelia offered. "Which he was aware of or exploited."

"Caused. I should have expected consistency in his viciousness." He hadn't, and his knee, fully healed now thanks to his little friends, gave him an annoying phantom twinge. "And then he leaned down and touched my jaw and I couldn't. Do anything."

"Just breathe a moment, taking relaxing breaths in and feeling the tension melt away," she said soothingly. "What did that inability to do anything feel like? The disassociation? A general feeling of helplessness?"

"Fear. I was more afraid than I've ever been in my life. It was overwhelming, paralyzing terror, and I couldn't get up off the floor." And he should have been better than that. He was a soldier, he'd been a soldier longer than most of his current associates had been alive, and he fought.

"And have you ever experienced that in any other situation prior to this point?" Bedelia queried.

"No. The closest has been perhaps half a second hesitation when a pilot beside me was blown away in Mogadishu, and I pushed through it." He ran a hand back through his hair, watching her face. "I have a history of calm confidence in the face of horror and I couldn't pull myself together."

She just nodded as if that was to be expected. "What do you feel thinking about it now?" she asked.

"I'm disappointed in myself for not fighting back. I should have been..." He slouched slightly in his chair, and looked out the window for a moment. Later, he'd go sit in the garden. "I've been fighting for so long. I've gotten out of similar situations before."

"I see the point of your cognitive dissonance over this event." Bedelia nodded calmly. "You feel disappointed, betrayed even, by your mind and body. You experience fear and helplessness and in your mind this was not a normal reaction so you have begun attempting to rationalize why this might have occurred by looking for flaws and weaknesses. Is this correct?"

"When you say it like that, I sound like an idiot," he drawled, smiling and actually feeling it. "I... have been coming to the conclusion that I wasn't as comatose during those two and a half years as I had hoped. Not remembering it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Apparently he had very fond memories of it all. But saying it out loud hasn't made it any better."

"Realizing that your body in particular has a very real and appropriate reaction to a certain stimulus is actually a major step," Bedelia told him. "It might not seem as if it does much, but it is key. I am going to say some things that might feel challenging on a certain level, so if what I am saying is too much, please just indicate and I will stop." She took a sip of water herself. "There are facts we cannot deny here about your past. Firstly, you were rendered physically and mentally helpless during that period through virtue of severe injury and incapacitating drugs. To complicate the matter, the mindset in which you ended up in this situation caused you to assume and accept responsibility that it was somehow something you deserved despite any logic to the contrary."

He started to open his mouth, and then closed it, and nodded. "Yes. I, yes. That is what I believed." It wasn't challenging, not as such; it was just something he didn't say in front of Wufei.

"It is an unusually persistent part of your mindset," she replied. "And powerful. Would I be wrong in suggesting that you often believe yourself undeserving of the care and attention of your partner?"

Treize caught himself halfway to protesting that, too, and then stopped himself. "You... would not be wrong. Given what I did to his colony. To his wife, his family. When I thought I was going to die at his hand, well, why not. The world was ending, fuck it. Why not? But he came back for me. I still... sometimes don't understand why. But I'm very glad he does."

She nodded. "I am giving you a possible explanation for your reaction of fear and paralysis, because the first step in preventing attacks from happening is understanding them. Tell me if it resonates with you in any way. We make an assumption that there were periods of lucidity that your mind has repressed, or drugs have interfered with your memory. It is possible that our painstaking work in reconnecting your dissociative episodes, linking body and mind once more, meant that when confronted by the principle source of your trauma from before, you were without your usual defense mechanism for the first time." She paused a moment. "You cannot heal with your armor still on, but removing it means that someone callous enough striking the healing spot can cause extreme pain. Over two years of learned responses hit you basically around the head at once. I believe this also accounts for the increase in dissociative episodes again as your mind tries to convince you it would be better to fall back on tried and true methods of dealing with this level of trauma."

"I can't disagree with any of that. But what do I do about it? It happened, it's over, everyone got home alive, and now I'm having nightmares about things that didn't bother me when they happened decades ago. I'm struggling to feel functional. My partner has been afraid to argue with me because he feels I'm... not handling things well. We've always had very good and probably bizarrely intense levels of communication."

"You have indeed," Bedelia agreed. "The purpose of my lengthy discussion was to try and establish that although this appears like a regression on the surface, your responses are more within what would be regarded as a normal and appropriate response to your experiences. We will now start some more practical approaches to dealing with this just as we did with the disassociation."

Wufei would have a very good laugh when he relayed that to him. It only took five years, but he was finally just getting close to normal emotional responses. A red banner day. It was hard not to smile awkwardly as he picked up his coffee cup again, feeling rueful. "My mother would be proud to hear that. Possibly I need you to put that in writing so Wufei can put it on the wall."

Bedelia smiled slightly. "Perhaps. It is important to keep it in mind though, that the emotions that felt so overwhelming were normal. The emotional responses you will have as part of this, again though distressing and upsetting, are completely appropriate. Therapy is about finding a balance and an equilibrium where happiness and development can flourish, not about suppressing everything."

"I feel compelled to argue that I spend quite a lot of time happy. Or at least in a neutrally good mood. When things aren't falling apart." Which seemed to be... interferingly often.

"Which again is an excellent sign," Bedelia agreed. "Something I'm sure was not always the case. Now, you are still journaling? As before, please pay particular attention to your nightmares and note them. Nightmares are your mind trying to tell you something important so they will be a source. As for the anxiety and panic attacks, we are now going to look at some of the additional Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques to make them manageable. You recall the ground and breathing exercises we have done? Those will also apply."

"I've been using them through this, yes. I did the breathing exercises to try to calm down while it was happening." It had kept him from completely hyperventilating, so that was something. "Probably not the most ideal circumstances, but they still worked."

"Good. The more frequently they are shown to work, the more effective they become. However, relaxation is like a mental muscle and should be practiced daily when you are calm rather than only when you are under duress. Now, one exercise, as you take well to writing, is to focus on an image, a picture or an object, and to describe firstly in objective terms what you are seeing. Shapes, colors, shades. Then after you do this, allow your mind to wander and produce memories and emotions that you write down in that same objective way. It is a means of establishing that distance without establishing disassociation."

"What kinds of images or objects would you recommend doing this... documented free association with?" It seemed like an interesting technique; he was struggling with random triggers, this could be a way to purposefully evoke some.

"Start with neutral abstract images, or random items from around your living space. Art can work well also," Bedelia advised. "For example, you could start with something as simple as...this paperweight on the desk."

A lion on a red background in a pyramid, and when he turned it, it contained a photograph from the unit his men had fought beside in Egypt, and their pre-Leo mechs that had been all over the place in design and standardized by paint. "I have a lot of memories associated with even the simplest things in this place, but I'm following the concept."

"Remember the first part of the exercise. Objective, factual. Observation. This is to key your mind to the process of non-judgmental consideration," Bedelia encouraged. "To give you an example, I would write: I see the color red as a background. There is a triangular shape. A stylized lion shape in the foreground. It is in glass. There is a photograph. It contains five people. They are male. They are wearing uniforms... and so on. Then pause and move on to the memories."

"All right." He could do that, he just needed to mark the objective before he let the memories hit. "I'll work on that."

"Good. For this first week, I want you to actively do your breathing exercises daily proactively, not when you have an incident. Write in your journal. Do at least one of these per day and importantly, indulge in a physical form of relaxation -- massage, hot bath or so on, once a day. Ensure that you eat well also." She paused. "Ordinarily I would be prescribing sleeping pills or other medication but it is not an option so we need to use natural forms. If you are willing to try it, and see if it responds better, an essential oil of clary sage has a strongly relaxing effect. It might not be tolerated by your symbiotes but it is a possibility."

"It's worth a try. At least indulging in a physical form of relaxation every day won't be a problem." That brought a comfortable smile to his mouth as he sipped his lukewarm coffee. Thank god Wufei was a hedonist, it did make everything easier.

"How are you feeling now?" Bedelia asked as it became clear the session was winding up.

"I enjoy having tools to use more than I enjoy talking about it." He spread his free hand in a thoughtful gesture. "So now I feel a bit better about where this might be going."

"I know. Unfortunately, the talking is a tool, don't forget that," Bedelia told him. "Are there any other questions you want to ask before I have to leave?"

"No, but thank you for coming. I'll try to make my next appointment in your office." He stood up, armed around least for a while with a new set of things to try to cope more actively.

"Don't push too hard, Treize," she advised, getting up. "We'll do at least the next one here, and review it then. If you start pressuring yourself to do things before you are ready, it could cause a setback. Slow and steady wins the race."

"I'm terrible at that when it comes to healing." He offered his hand to her. The best he could do was to try not to make it worse. "Thank you again."

She shook it with her elegant hand and smiled. "No need to thank me. Now rest, I can see myself out."

"Of course." It wasn't a long walk down the hallway, and the security system was permissive for people leaving.

Coming in was another matter. Eventually he'd get everything under control and it would all... settle.

Eventually.

* * *

Treize had left a voice message for Quatre asking that they speak the next time he was in town to discuss business with Wufei. It was a very casual sort of message, notable in the fact that Treize had never contacted him previously. In all of his years of coordinating business deals with Wufei, at both their house and his trips between China and the Maghreb, it wasn't that the man had avoided him, but perhaps... a little, yes.

Then everything had gone wrong on L3, which made the request surprising. By the end of their meeting, he'd seen Mariemaia and heard all about her new boyfriend and his motorcycle, drank far too much tea and eaten too many pastries and little sandwiches.

Treize had been in his workshop in the back yard the entire time.

He was going to assume that Wufei was at least partially aware of the invitation, so excused himself politely asking if he could look in on Treize in the workshop and see how he was doing. He understood from the others and from his own sources that Treize and Wufei's experience on L3 had been significantly worse than his own. Perhaps it was the way he looked, but a lot of people felt shouting loudly and being intimidating would break him somehow. That was fine; people wasted their time shouting at him, he wasn't bothered by it, and they didn't get what they wanted. He knew enough of what Trowa had told him about the original trip to L3 where Wufei had been held hostage for a few weeks with Treize and beheaded Dekim Barton to know that he was glad it had stopped at the shouting.

The workshop was just off to the side of the sprawling rose garden, past the koi pond. The property itself was lovely, allowed a little overgrowth in a fanciful way; statues had been added over the years, and some of them had mechanics involved, motion sensor triggers that made them move. It was a lovely space; the door to the workshop beyond was probably only closed to keep out the chill, but it wasn't locked. He could hear music playing and there was a smell of metal.

"Hello?" he called out as he opened the door. "I'm sorry to interrupt. If you're busy I can come back another time...?"

It was wall to wall parts, work tables, bits of something mid-progress, equipment up the walls. Treize was settled on a rolling stool near one of the tables, comparing a small piece of metal to something on a datapad he had propped up. "Ah, no, now is great, thank you, Quatre. I... wanted to talk to you about the ZERO system."

Quatre immediately felt almost a shiver run over him. The ZERO system... so much more than what their creators intended. "I'm not sure what I can do to help you, Treize, as you obviously know a great deal, but I did do research into it all during and after the war if that helps."

"What I know is how to build it and how to use it. I have Ancient historical schematics that I built the Epyon ZERO system from." He got up from the stool, closing the datapad before heading toward a heavily taped shut box. "I can't keep what I've built where I can put my hands on it easily again. I think you're the best person to give it to." His mouth twitched into a smile, and he added, "Of course, I have the impression that it wants me to give it to you. Which would upset Wufei if I told him."

"It shouldn't be used," Quatre practically blurted, much to his own chagrin. "We... we did what we had to during the War, but afterwards... I don't think any of us understood at the time what it was that we were dealing with. It is so much more than a decision making optimizer."

"It has a mind of its own," Treize agreed, offering him the heavy, taped up cardboard box. "I can't destroy it, but I can't keep it."

He felt uncomfortable taking the box from Treize, but he did so. "How much do you know about how it worked?" he asked, sensing somehow that it was a conversation that needed to be opened up. He glanced almost suspiciously at the box he was holding and put it down.

It was very heavily taped, as if the man wanted to keep himself out of the box. "You know, very little. I knew what it was when we had first come across it in the record. I'd built the cockpit for Epyon, oh, originally AC 190, but I hadn't finished the ZERO system in it until I started to lose control of everything."

"We didn't need to know at the time, just that it did," Quatre said. "After it had such a... catastrophic impact on me, I researched. Even after the next time, I did more, and it became very apparent to me that what we experience in using the ZERO system is the equivalent of turning on a nuclear reactor to power a light bulb."

"Which is why it drove most of the pilots who used it... to act in ways that were outside of their normal." And Wufei said that Treize had never experienced any such problem; that he'd just been... wound up, like a man who'd taken too many uppers. Manic. Quatre had seen a little of that when they'd been in L3 a couple of months before, prior to them dutifully drinking their drugged tea based on Treize's prior warning.

"Yes and no," Quatre exhaled. It had been a truth he had wrestled with for a while. "The Ancients dealt with Zero Point Energy and the quantum fields that surround it." He wasn't sure how much Treize actually knew of this and he'd tried explaining it to some of the others with little success. They weren't as driven as he was to understand. "A lot of their technology responded to it as an energy source including their neuro-interfacing. There are records of pilots controlling spacecraft with their minds, and even vast mobile... colonies just by sitting in an interface chair. What they did not do was act as a probability machine. Our efforts to replicate this ease of connection started to produce this probability effect, and at no point did anyone stop to wonder why the Ancients -- who must have been aware of a capability that literally appeared the moment we plugged in the energy source -- removed that from all of their systems? Why would they give up such an advantage?"

He felt the old agitation building again. His father had believed that it was because they were beings of pure peace, an example that mankind should emulate. He knew now that wasn't true. They were less accustomed to war, but it didn't stop them battling for survival.

"It's clearly not as advantageous as we thought. Any machine that drives most of their users mad..." Treize showed no signs of the same type of agitation while discussing it. "I've read about zero point energy. We were unsuccessful in harnessing it for mobile suits and have remained nuclear."

"Zero point energy can be harnessed, that much is clear, but it's not just the effect on the user, it's what other effect it has," Quatre replied. "You're aware of the principles of uncertainty that govern subatomic particles and waves? "

"Yes." Treize sounded both interested and amused by the direction the conversation had taken, and leaned against the edge of his work table.

This bit was less amusing however. "And the principle that the act of observation influences and can determine the state?" Quatre found himself clenching his hands tightly.

The man was smart, though; he knew that Khushrenada was following what he was saying. "So when I played through the scenarios on L3 where you ended up shoved out a window and Relena died on the negotiation room table. By observing it, I somehow made it real?"

"The only finite factor in the equation is the person observing." Quatre's voice was even. "Around each event exists the quantum foam of possibilities which the ZERO system shows you, but the act of observation is the catalyst for the winnowing down of those possibilities. It draws from the observer what should be observed. It draws from their highest mind, but also their lowest. Most people are sent into shock or horror at this and once disengaged try to rationalize it. However, the point I'm making is that it can only show you the possibilities that _you_ are able to conceive. If you're the type of person who can only see a way to peace through war, those are the options you'll see. The universe resists this constraint and a natural pressure builds against those limited options which results in... psychotic episodes."

He paused a moment. "Those who have used the ZERO system successfully have one common factor. A willingness to accept their own death as a favorable probability, rather than fight it."

"It comes for all of us. I could no more deny it than the weather." Of course, if you grew up in a world where even the weather could be controlled, what did that do to someone's mindset? "Would you?"

"I used the ZERO system successfully in the end," Quatre murmured. "But ultimately, it leads inevitably to courses of action that result in that death and tunes the energies to that necessity. If enough of us use the system believing peace can only be found through war, the probabilities offered become more focused until in the end it becomes the very endless waltz you were trying to prevent."

Something about that seemed to satisfy the man. He relaxed, letting go of a tension Quatre hadn't been aware he'd been holding. "Take it from me. I know what will happen every time I use it."

Quatre looked at him. "But it's not just about you. All of us who use it reinforce that pattern. Over and over." Maybe he wasn't getting it across. "We followed the same paths and each time we used it, it became the only path. If someone truly dedicated against bloodshed had used it first, all of the death and destruction wouldn't have happened. The pattern would have been set as peaceful resolution. Treize, we left the very imprints of ourselves on the essence of the universe."

"All of the deaths and destruction was already occurring before the ZERO systems were rebuilt. The world was already heading down a path." He gave Quatre a very tight smile, but his eyes were bright as he looked at him. "I do understand what you're saying. I also know that I can rebuild it in a matter of hours. It's all up here." He tapped two fingers against his temple. "And if I destroy the system in the box, I will rebuild it, eventually, in case it's needed again. I won't have to struggle with that compulsion if I know someone else, someone who can be trusted with it, just. Has it. Locked away somewhere."

Quatre nodded. "I will ensure that it is kept safe and secure," he said. Not only had Treize impressed himself upon the universe but it had done the same back. "In the hope none of us feel it should be needed again."

That was something for him to think about later, if in interacting, what else had crossed over other than plans. Perhaps it was where his own anxiety came from. "I hope so as well. Have you been well since you used ZERO? Long term effects?"

"It's difficult to say what is as a result, and what was there before," Quatre answered, and on impulse reached out and touched Treize over his heart. For all the dark complexity of the man his heart felt... pure. It was a strange juxtaposition.

Very open and pure. The man didn't question him, just watched, not tensing, not moving. "I tried to do my best." Could he tell what Quatre was doing? "I feel in some ways the best I can do now is step back and cede the field to peaceful people who can do better."

"You are more peaceful in your heart than many." Quatre smiled a little; perhaps that was Wufei's influence. "Perhaps if that urge is turned to more peaceful pursuits, it will fade. You've already sponsored the development of energy sources for L2, after all."

"More work to be done for all of the colonies. But I am always going to have an urge to protect the people who matter in a bad situation." He tipped his head back, and glanced around the workshop. "And the easiest way to avoid that is to rebuild old cars instead of mobile suits."

"It seems to be doing you good," Quatre acknowledged. "How are you feeling after what happened?"

Quatre wasn't sure how he would have responded if he had been in a similar situation, and then found himself plunged into it a second time. Treize laughed, looking down at the edge of the table for a moment. "I want to say that I'm fine, but it rather left me a bit of a wreck. I won't be joining any more diplomatic missions and I think dear Cousin Dorothy now understands why."

"She should never have pressured you into that situation." Quatre shook his head. "We all knew that."

"When you are a former dictator in exile, you are well advised to do what the ruling government tells you. Hopefully, you never have to put that tip to use." His expression tipped a little more toward mirthful. "And everything resolved peacefully enough in the end. But it reiterated to me that I... should not be making those kinds of decisions, with or without ZERO."

"I think Wufei would have something to say about that as well," Quatre replied. "He does like to try and protect people from themselves."

"Then I have made an excellent choice in partners. As have you with Trowa. Triton. Whatever he's calling himself this week." He nudged the box slightly. "I'll let you and Wufei go back to plotting the overrun of the business world."

"Thank you, Treize," Quatre said, picking up the box. "And I hope that maybe we can get to know each other a little bit more informally in time."

That seemed to catch him off guard slightly, as if it were unexpected. "I generally try to leave you former pilots alone. Except for Duo, who... doesn't leave when he comes by. But maybe, yes."

Quatre smiled. "I'm glad. After all, we have a shared experience others cannot understand."

"Sometimes I'm not even sure if we understand it ourselves." Treize lifted his hand in something of a wave, leaving Quatre to pick his way out of the workshop and back through the garden.

He had not been expecting to be entrusted with a ZERO unit when he came today, and now he would have to turn his thoughts to protecting it. He could do that.

He could lock it away at the bottom of a metaphorical deep dark pit and hope he never succumbed to temptation.

InshAllah.


End file.
